Muslim nations condemed the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the national capital Jerusalem as a “provocation and hostility against” the Islamic world.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Istanbul on Friday released a statement that “reaffirmed the centrality of the Palestinian cause” after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the rotating term president of the OIC, called the extraordinary summit.
Speaking at the closing of the OIC, Erdogan said the international community “must stop watching the massacres from the bleachers” as Palestinian youth are killed by “Israeli terror,” proposing an international peacekeeping force.
AP reports the OIC said Israel committed “savage crimes” with the backing of Donald Trump’s administration, emboldened by the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem.
The OIC response ignores the fact that some of Judaism’s holiest sites are located in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem; the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron; and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus.
Erdogan, along with the Palestinian prime minister, was speaking to hundreds of thousands waving Palestinian and Turkish flags at an Istanbul rally dubbed “Curse Oppression, Support Jerusalem.” He told the rally that the responsibility to defend Jerusalem lay with them as crowds chanted “Chief, take us to Jerusalem.”
Five days earlier in London, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel a “terror state” and denounced its actions in defending its Gaza border as “genocide.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by saying Erdogan is among the biggest supporters of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and suggested he “not preach morality to us.”
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